I bought the Mad Men lighters, now I have to start smoking
I mentioned in my review of the first Mad Men episode that the show makes me want to start smoking and drinking a lot. Now I have another reason to take up smoking (or should I say return as I did smoke for one summer as a teen): I got the two new collectible lighters yesterday.
They’re both pretty damn cool and look a lot like the limited edition, lighter-shaped DVD set for the first season of the show. The limited edition lighter features the full Mad Men logo (the title and the back of the man’s head and arm) and is numbered (only 1000 were made). It comes in a nice black case. The regular lighter is metal and features the Mad Men title (without the pic of the man) on the bottom of the front.
AMC is spending $25 million to promote the second season of the show (commercials, print ads, promotional products, tie-ins, etc), which premieres on July 27, and I’m all for spending that kind of money if it gets me cool collectibles like this. Now I have to go get a few cartons of Lucky Strikes and a couple of really nice suits. (Check back on July 21 as we’ll be giving away some Mad Men goodies like the DVDs and one of these lighters, so you can start smoking too.)
Britney Spears Runs Over Photog’s Foot… Again
Britney Spears Runs Over Photog’s Foot… Again
Her driving record continues to worsen, but with such a high number of run-ins, it’s beginning to look like the fault may not totally fall on Britney Spears.
Just last night, the Pieces Of Me singer rolled into the Four Seasons Hotel, managing to catch another paparazzo’s foot underneath the tire of her car.
According to press on the scene, “The drivin’ popwreck was surrounded by photogs as she made her way into the parking lot. The paps refused to move, despite several warnings and documented footage of how Britney rolls. Moments later, Brit shockingly rolled her new wheels over a guy’s foot.”
While “shockingly” may not be the correct choice of wording, the latest incident surely cannot help at the emergency custody hearing scheduled for Friday (November 15) by Kevin Federline’s legal team.
30 Days: Working in a Coalmine (season premiere)
“All you need to be a coal miner is a weak mind and a strong back.” James
One thing I love about 30 Days is that in every episode there is a wealth of information. In the first five minutes of this season’s premiere episode, I more than doubled the amount of information I knew about the coal mining industry. More importantly, I was ready to learn even more.
This season’s premiere, like the past premieres, stars Spurlock himself as the episode’s guinea pig and just like the other times he has put himself in harm’s way, Spurlock’s wife Alex expresses her concerns. What I found funny is that her knowledge of the perils of your average coal miner was pretty equal to my own. It really doesn’t go too far past cave-ins and black lung.
Before he goes back home to his coal mining town in West Virginia, Spurlock fills us in on exactly how his family made their living off of the coal industry and while he may be an elite New York documentarian, it was his father’s hard work and digging know how that sent him to that fancy film school in New York City.
The first surprise for me was learning that the average coal miner makes $65,000 a year and that’s just the laborers. The managers and the more experienced workers make considerably more. This really shattered the images I had gotten from movies like Coal Miner’s Daughter and Zoolander.
On day one, Morgan meets his boss and the patriarch of his host family, Dale. Dale seems to be a great guy and when he says that he’s worked twenty seven years in the mines without being diagnosed with black lung, the foreshadowing is almost enough to make you cry.
Spurlock does a brilliant job trying to express how strange it is heading underground for a day of work. The smells, the temperature, the noise, the lack of daylight are all factors that serve to make him nervous and it’s clear that most viewers will never know the feelings that he’s having and, more importantly, will never want to.
While Spurlock is given the simplest task in the mine, shoveling coal onto a conveyor belt, he still is reminded that if he doesn’t watch what he’s doing, he could get caught on the belt and killed. This made me wonder exactly how many different ways a person could die in a coal mine and also wonder if I was about to find out.
Halfway into the episode, Spurlock takes a look at the environmental effects of coal mining. In great detail, he shows us the more destructive ways that companies mine for coal and the effect it has on the landscape. The environmentalists he speaks with make a damn good case for the halting of mountain top removal.
In the very next scene, Morgan visits a lobbyist for the mining company who makes his case in black and white. Until someone can come up with a cheaper and safer way to power America, they will keep digging for coal.
One of the most heartbreaking moments comes when we meet Dale’s older brother Coy, who suffers from black lung and even though he can’t walk 100 feet without having to stop and catch his breath, he says he wouldn’t have done anything differently.
One thing that makes Spurlock so engaging is that he isn’t afraid to show sympathy for the subjects in his documentaries. Unlike Michael Moore, who stoically argues his position and ridicules those who disagree, Spurlock is sensitive to the fact that there are always two sides to every issue and more importantly, each side has a very human face.
When Dale and Morgan go in to get checked for black lung, Dale’s news is, of course, bad and he is diagnosed with particles in both lungs. Even though, he is destined to end up like his brother, he makes it clear that he is in no position to retire or find another job so he must continue to work in the mine.
Governor Lets Slick Rick Slide
The state of New York feels Slick Rick has atoned for his sins. (And we don’t mean his excessive bling in the late 1980s.)
In light of Rick’s service to his community and clean record after the fact, Gov. David Paterson is granting a full and unconditional pardon to the rapper, who spent six years behind bars after pleading guilty to attempted murder and weapons charges for shooting his cousin and a random bystander outside a club in 1990. Both victims survived.
Paterson praised Rick, whose real name is Ricky Walters, for keeping his nose clean and apparently learning his lesson since his release from prison in 1997.
“Mr. Walters has fully served the sentence imposed upon him for his convictions, had an exemplary disciplinary record while in prison and on parole, and has been living without incident in the community for more than 10 years,” the governor said in a statement.
The eyepatch-sporting “La Di Da Di” purveyor has also spent time counseling troubled youth and has been without parole supervision since 2000.
Since then, however, the British-born Rick has had issues with the INS because of a federal law requiring the deportation of foreign-born criminals convicted of aggravated felonies or weapons offenses, even if they’re in the U.S. legally.
The rapper and his family moved to the Big Apple in 1975 and he still lives in the Bronx with his American-born wife and their two teenage children.
Government pardons can alleviate such sticky situations, however, and Paterson has encouraged “relief from deportation” for Slick Rick.